A feather is more than just a feather in the hands of Taiwanese dance company Hung Dance.
Four feet long, it sweeps across a dancer’s neck—the dancer collapses. Later, it whips back and forth with the energy of the two dancers grappling with it in their hands.
This pheasant feather, called a lingzi in Chinese, was traditionally worn on a warrior’s helmet. In Chinese opera, it’s used to express emotion and reveal character. In Hung Dance’s work Birdy, it represents something more: the vocabulary of tradition, maybe, or the vagaries of nature, or perhaps the struggle to fly free?
These are the questions explored in Dance and Diplomacy, an artistically rich course offered this fall through the Enrichment Program. Taught by instructor Luke Wachter, the course will feed the eyes, mind, and spirit with new creative fodder and cultural insight. The course meets Nov. 5 and 12 and includes a live performance of Birdy at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts on November 19.
“This course gives you the context to have a really rich, deep aesthetic experience with this art,” says Wachter, who serves as the Newman Center’s associate director for educational initiatives.
Hung Dance has burst on the dance scene as an innovative dance company that blends traditional Chinese arts—like Peking Opera and Tai Chi—with modern dance techniques. Course participants will learn about that dance history and how dancers use their bodies to create meaning. They’ll also learn why Hung Dance is important as an example of cultural diplomacy.
“A small nation like Taiwan, for example, can’t achieve its aims through military strength, but there is a lot of power to shape global perception through the export of its culture,” Wachter says.
The course will delve into the ways governments around the world support artists, what types of artists they support, and how this “soft power” is used to transmit ideas and values to the rest of the world.
Last year another Taiwanese company, Cloud Gate, impressed audiences at the Newman Center with a buoyant multimedia performance. Hung Dance, meanwhile, is a younger company whose name (the Chinese character 翃 hóng) means “to fly” or “to soar.” Founder Lai Hung-Chung describes Birdy as an exploration of the tension between limitation and freedom. The production won acclaim at the 91st American Dance Festival and has sold out theaters across the U.S.
“It’s really interesting work,” says Wachter. “It is very much inspired by the movement of individual birds and flocks of birds, and you’ll recognize the fractal nature of how these animals move.”
Tickets to the Birdy performance are included in the Enrichment Program course Dance and Diplomacy: Finding Meaning and Connection through Contemporary Dance with Hung Dance of Taiwan. Register here.
